


5 Things Steve Rogers Gave Up To Be Captain America

by Gryphonrhi



Category: Captain America (2011)
Genre: 5 Things, Gen, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:00:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryphonrhi/pseuds/Gryphonrhi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <div class="center">Disclaimers:  I grew up on the comics, but I've seen the movie a lot more recently.  Movie canon it is.  Thanks to my betas, Devo, Eponin, JiM, and Raine, and to Dragon, as ever.  Mistakes, of course, are mine.  (The penultimate paragraph is courtesy of JiM, who lets me crib her best lines.)<br/>Rated: R for some disturbing imagery.</div>
    </blockquote>





	5 Things Steve Rogers Gave Up To Be Captain America

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers: I grew up on the comics, but I've seen the movie a lot more recently. Movie canon it is. Thanks to my betas, Devo, Eponin, JiM, and Raine, and to Dragon, as ever. Mistakes, of course, are mine. (The penultimate paragraph is courtesy of JiM, who lets me crib her best lines.)  
> Rated: R for some disturbing imagery.

5\. Illusions.

But then, didn't everyone who fought in World War II lose illusions? In any war, he suspects.

The first one Steve lost was his faith in politicians. The revue might have helped with civilian morale, but it was an insult to Dr. Erskine's work in developing the serum and rebuilding it once he escaped the Nazis. It wasted Howard Stark's work in developing the Nutrient Rays and a power array that could feed the rays without blacking out Brooklyn _or_ blowing up the building. And it wasted the lives of the agents who died when HYDRA attacked.

As for war itself, the books from the civilian and base libraries discussed strategy and tactics. (A few mentioned that logistics were even more important, since armies fight on their feet and their stomachs.) Sherman's quote about "War is hell," had warned him about some of what he'd face; some of his mother's stories when she came home from the hospital had forearmed him for how badly people could be hurt and still not die. The training sergeants had mentioned diseases and conditions to watch for, towards the end of basic training.

Honestly, nothing could _really_ warn you about the stench of mud churned up from dirt, blood, urine, and feces, or the way it stuck to your boots. About the screams of the injured and the long, low moans of the dying. About the stink of a human body gone wrong from fleas, lice, maggots, trench foot, gas-rotted lungs, gangrene, or worse. Some conditions he'd never so much as name to someone who hadn't been there.

Steve never thought it was going to be easy. He never doubted that the war had to be fought. He never thought that belief was an illusion.

He was just never sure how any of them were going to fit back into the lives they left behind them.

4\. Time.

Steve didn't expect to have any spare time in a war and he didn't, not in basic training and not once he'd proven himself. It was a rare moment when he wasn't studying maps, supply lists, his men's condition, his gear, Agent Carter's briefings, Howard Stark's gadgets, or Colonel Phillips' mood. Leisure was infrequent, stolen where he could get it or thought he could afford it. Front lines rarely gave second chances, and he never wanted to write another condolence letter if he could possibly help it.

(He didn't entirely give up his art, but that was mostly because his sketches helped him think. Well, to be honest, he'd start thinking and his hands, unused to being idle, would find pencil and blank space on a page -- sometimes in army manuals or on the orders of the day. Bucky knew what he was doing and how much it helped; soon enough after that, so did the rest of the Commandos, and then Command.)

Bucky tried to tell him to quit studying, to take more time for R&R. It took Dugan hauling him aside to explain before Steve _got_ it. Bucky said, "Rest, recreate, this is not complicated." Dugan said, "Look up, Captain, look around, or you'll be worse than a cab horse in blinders -- and we'll get blindsided." Steve thanked him, then found Bucky and thanked him, too.

As far as he could tell -- as far as he had time and energy to sort it out -- wars went through time, money and energy, the way people went through food, water, and air. (Colonel Phillips snorted when Steve said that and told him to take a stack of reports and start reading them, since he clearly had too much spare time. He didn't say Steve was wrong, however.)

3\. Identity.

If Steve went home to Brooklyn (if Brooklyn was still home after the war, and he didn't let himself think about 'after the war' very often), no one would know him. His parents were dead, and while he's sure his mother would have recognized his face, his father's jawline, no one else would. Not the bullies Bucky'd chased off, the girls he'd never worked up the nerve to ask out, or the ones Bucky brought for double dates. Maybe his teachers -- Mr. Berryman, the art teacher, would probably recognize his face after a while -- but only maybe.

The only one from those days who'd still know this new Steve Rogers for the old Steve Rogers fell into a gorge in a European location that'll probably never be unsealed from 'Eyes Only.' His body was never recovered, and Steve had to write the letter to Bucky's parents three times before he could keep his tears from blurring the ink.

2\. His world.

Steve knew the crash into the Arctic ice was a one-way trip. He knew it the entire time he was setting up his date with Peggy Carter while piloting the craft down into an ice floe. She knew too, but she pretended they'd make that date. Steve hopes she knew (knows? He needs to find out, but he doesn't want to) how grateful he was that she kept her side of the conversation going.

He'd have been there to dance if he could, two left feet and stammering confusion around women or no.

He didn't mind dying for his country's safety, for the world's. But now that he's alive again, if lost by seven decades, Steve still doesn't know what to make of this new world he's in. He fought to preserve it, or maybe give it a chance to incubate.

When he gets down to it, he just wanted to let people _live_. That doesn't keep him from being confused by the choices they made, then and since, or the choices he needs to make now.

Some of his attitudes were old-fashioned in the '40s, and Steve knew it then. He has a sneaking suspicion it's going to be even harder to fit himself into the '10s.

1\. His name.

In a hundred different ways, Steve Rogers died in Dr. Erskine's chamber.

He's had to learn to duck under lights he'd never have noticed before, to crouch going through older doors that seem a lot shorter, to move sideways through tight places much more cautiously. He can run for hours now, effortlessly, and sometimes he only thinks later about the wheezing and blood-spitting that would have followed a run a tenth that length before Dr. Erskine.

Time was he could get drunk on one beer, forget two. Now Steve drinks whisky straight if he wants to get a mild buzz and eats five times as much as he did just to keep his weight steady. He's lost his ability to go unnoticed by men and women alike, too, and it's not just the height and the muscle, or all the military training. His posture doesn't fit into this time or place; he stands and moves differently than most.

Steve's glad for the changes, glad he got to serve his country, glad he (finally) got to go to war with Bucky… but he wakes up in bed sometimes wondering how small the mattress is, because his foot's over the edge. Some mornings his socks look huge, or his hat. He doesn't wish for that body back, but sometimes when the twilight breezes pick up, or the pre-dawn chill begins to lift and he notices the wind well before the shift in _his_ temperature, he wonders if he noticed weather changes more quickly before the super soldier serum.

And he's lost his name. Everyone here calls him Cap like that's a name, not a rank he fought to deserve above and beyond that dog and pony show Senator Brandon came up with. No one here calls him Steve except Tony Stark -- and Tony's not his father, but the tilt of his head, his casual ease with women, a motion of his hand, the line of his shoulders and back when he's exhausted, depressed, not yet gathering his breath to start over… All these things _are_ Howard Stark and Steve's got to stop looking for him.

Honestly, so far even Tony still calls him Steve like that's his secret identity and Captain America is the real him.

Maybe Tony's right. Maybe the other Avengers being assembled will use his name and it will sound like his again.

Maybe the problem isn't in them.

0\. His sense of perspective?

Steve can't laugh at himself for it yet, but at least he can smile about it. On the one hand, he has seventy years of history to learn and his own mind and memories to sort through. (No, really, he doesn't want help from the so-friendly SHIELD counselor who kept bothering him until Steve finally went to Fury to get her to leave him alone.) On the other hand, he's here to sort, and learn, and smile. There's that.

The good thing about his super-soldier reflexes is that they let him stop inappropriate responses before they're fully formed… mostly. Sometimes, Steve can tell which SHIELD agents have spent much time in a war zone. They're the ones who don't slam doors, clatter pots in the kitchen, or walk up on Steve _too_ quietly. He wishes he didn't need the consideration from them, but there's no shame in still having battlefield reflexes when, to him, the battles are only a few weeks behind him.

And they're useful reflexes anyway, when Tony's so tired he's dropping pieces of armor he meant to weld or Jarvis' voice has just startled Clint into trying to spill a gallon of milk. They're even more useful if Nick Fury's right and there are still villains who need to be faced down, win or lose (hopefully win), and a team to help and try to protect, even if they're not the Commandos, and he's quite sure they'd all be offended about 'protect.'

He still has a country. He still has what honor he ever had, even if the way he seems to have become a war hero while he was… gone is more than a little embarrassing.

He's still alive to remember the Commandos, and his old command, and the way Peggy Carter's mouth would tighten at the corners when she was trying not to smile at him. (It was one of the first things he sketched, before her memory could start to fade.)

He missed that date with Peggy, but Steve hopes she found love and happiness again. People still love now, for that matter, and are still people. The technology has changed, but human behavior hasn't. That's comforting sometimes, and frustrating at others, but it's familiar.

Heck, New York still has the Yankees, even if his Dodgers moved to California. (He's going to have to go visit a library and find out what in the world happened there.) The New York Public Library is as gloriously full of books as ever, and the librarians are still glad to help with research.

Steve thinks he'll manage, will _find_ ways to manage, and along the way, in the process, he'll find himself again. Maybe it's more that he needs to settle into this new self, the way he never had time to do during the war.

His values are hopelessly old-fashioned and maybe he tends to think in virtues so broad that they're clichés... but they're his.

That'll do for a place to start.  


  
_~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~_   



End file.
